5 for Friday and I'm Back!

Well! Its been a LONG time since I posted. As you know (because I mention it in every other post), I super LOVE Christmas and I get really involved in decorating at home and in my classroom, planning fun activities for my family and my " teaching kids" as my 3 year old calls them, and lots and lots of wrapping! Needless to say, the blog got put by the wayside in all of that. I meant to at least do Farley's Currently, buuuuut obviously didn't. :) Several of the blogs I follow were doing this fun linky about our week's and while it is now Saturday and not Friday, I thought I would link up too. :) You can link up HERE. 


Last week was our first week back after our Christmas break. I was preparing myself for a lot of behavior and rules review but my kiddo's came back like they had only been gone for a weekend! It was a great way to come back! Before break we had 2 snow days, so we missed out on our Christmas party and our PJ day/ Comfy Reading day. They were both scheduled for yesterday ( Friday) BUT, we had ANOTHER snow (ice) day. Poor kids. :( Hopefully we can reschedule all of that stuff for next week and it can ACTUALLY happen!

Thing number 1 I HAVE to share is that I got a laminator for Christmas! I am SO excited. My super awesome hubby ALWAYS does a good job with my gifts and this year was no exception. I squealed so loud when I opened it, and then promptly made him take a picture of me with it to brag about on Facebook to all my teacher friends. There was much jealousy. :)

This is me and the peanut with our piles of loot to open. :)

2. This week we have been hard at work on adding 2 digit numbers with regrouping. Our curriculum really covers it hard for several days but I purchased Amy Lemons' DOUBLE DIGIT ADDITION PACK as an extension activity to use my kiddo's. On Friday we were going to do a sort of " write the room" with math problems instead. Buuuuuuut, see the above, that didn't happen. I'll post pics of it when we do get to it. :)

3. I am also working on finishing my very first FREEBIE!!! to put on TPT. Technically it is ready, but I wanted to "juj" it up a little bit so I am going to put a couple of cute borders around them and then I will post them. They are for summarizing/retelling and story elements.  Hope to have those ready by this Friday. 

 4. Thursday we went on a scavenger hunt that we were supposed to have before break. I got the idea from Fun in First Grade. It was supposed to be a back to school activity but I modified it. I used the clues that she came up with but used a different book. You can see the clues HERE. I used the book Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett since she was the author that we were studying for the month of December. 

FIFG said that Little Debbie made a gingerbread man cookie. The store that I went to did not carry them, so I decided to just use my gingerbread man cookie cutter and sugar cookie dough that I flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. 

After we got done reading the story I told the kid's I had a gingerbread treat for them. Then I had them each get a napkin and put it at their seat. They were salivating. :) I made a big show out of getting the tin from my desk and opening it. Inside of it was the first clue. Their eyes got SO big when I had that in my hand instead of a cookie for them. Our first clue took us to the library. I had it worked out with Mrs. V, our librarian, to take the tin that actually had the cookies upstairs and put them out at their seats (hence the napkin) after we had visited her. The clues took us all over the place and they very quickly got each clue. I had our principal, secretaries, lunch ladies, and specials teacher's in on it. When we got back to our room Mrs. V. had crumbled one up a little leading into our room. It was great. The fact that I was with them the whole time made it quite magical for them. They kept saying over and over " How did these get here!?" It was so great and I am glad I did it. We will DEFINITELY be doing this again next year. 

5. And last thing,  today I got my hair cut. It was driving me nuts and I love me a good stacked bob. :) 

So, there are my 5. I am hoping to be more on top of things now and post more regularly...maybe even get to a Fab Five on an actual Friday! :)

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